Another classic Washington morning-gray, upper 50's, damp and wet pavement. Breakfast was at the Beehive Restaurant-a Montesano classic since the 1930's. Back at the motel, we got ready to hit the road-with a somewhat leisurely start time of about 10:00am, because we were planning a short day's ride of about 40 miles to Shelton.
We headed east on old Hwy 410, also known as the Montesano-Elma Road. This road brought back not-so-fond memories of last year-remarkably rough chip-seal pavement. This year, however, it wasn't quite so bad, because we had to endure the rough ten miles to Elma first thing in the morning, not after 100 miles of riding, and we didn't have a 20mph headwind to buck. Also.
We stopped at a small grocery store to down the now traditional quart of sport drink. This store was within sight of the Satsop Nuclear Power Plant. Steve took a bold step and had a bottle of Gatorade G2, in some un-natural brilliant blue color. Given my fondness for Powerade with the wonder substance Ion4, I grabbed a bottle of a fluorescent green "sour melon" flavor. The color of this stuff would make anti-freeze look dull and drab. I took a picture of this elixir, but the true color was not captured with absolute fidelity, but it is a pretty good approximation. I have a suspicion that Powerade Sour Melon (with Ion4)is really some sort of effluent from the nearby nuclear plant. It may make me glow in the dark-we'll see.
The Adventure Cycling Association route took us over the Cloquallam Road to Shelton. The first 15 miles climbed gently, but continuously. The road surface was generally quite good, but was even better when entered Mason County. We stopped at a little grocery store for coffee in Buck's Prairie, which was owned by a friendly Hawaiian woman. After chatting with her for a while, we took off again. The last miles into Shelton went with out incident, other than what seemed like a hundred dogs chased us down their fencelines as we rode through the rural landscape of Grays Harbor and Mason Counties.
Once in Shelton we sought out a place lunch. We settled for Vern's, which looked somewhat upscale, particularly for Shelton. Steve asked if we could park our bikes inside, and they were totally accommodating-they said "sure, bring 'em on in". We wheeled our bikes through the restaurant, and parked them in the lounge. The people were friendly, and the food was good.
Later, we took a walking tour of downtown Shelton with Brew the beagle, where he attracted all types of attention. Steve went out to see a movie at the tiny Shelton Cinema-" ", which he said was pretty intense.
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